How to make Money with GOOGLE ADSENSE

If you have a website or a blog, you should definitely sign up for Google Adsense. It’s one of the few programs you can truly ‘set and forget’ – once it’s there you don’t really need to do much else with it except making money and making it fast.

But there are ways and means to maximize your income from Google Adsense and make easy cash, and as you get to know more about it you can start to generate a decent income from it that will keep rolling in month after month. It’s a true passive income, which is why so many people are using it.

Most people have heard of Google Adsense, but not everyone understands exactly how to use it to its best advantage. So we’ll start with how to use it in its most basic sense and then progress to the more advanced benefits you can get from the program.

Basically if you have a website or blog you can sign up for a free account at Google Adsense and start putting contextual ads on your website. What do I mean by contextual? It means quite simply that the ads which appear on your site will be relevant to your content. So let’s say for example that your website is about tropical fish. The Google ads will then be related to tropical fish in some way. And because of the information that you give to Google, they will also display adverts that are relevant to your area. So if you are based in the UK the ads that appear will be relevant to UK buyers; if your site or business is based in Australia the ads will appeal to Australian buyers.

All of this is carefully worked out for you in order to attract the maximum click through possible for your website and your ads. Every time someone clicks on an ad you will get a few cents into your Adsense account, so it makes sense that the more attractive and relevant your ads are to your visitors, the more money you will make and the quick cash will begin.

Let’s have a look at the appearance of your ads now, since this can affect the amount of click throughs you get. You can choose the color and borders of your ads to fit right in with the color scheme on your site if you wish, but it’s worth experimenting with having no borders at all around your adverts since this makes them blend in with your content more seamlessly and may encourage more click throughs in a subtle but effective manner.

However well you integrate Google Adsense into your current blog or website though, there is obviously a limit to the amount of money you can make from one site. If you get thousands of people visiting your site every day then you can expect to get a good income from it but many people don’t get this number of visitors and that’s where you need a separate strategy to try and up your numbers.

In this case you can go to the advanced level of Adsense income and think about starting several sites, all based around a different yet popular subject. You should think of these essentially as being content sites, since they are often chock full of articles and useful content which is carefully keyworded to attract plenty of search engine traffic on that particular subject. The Adsense ads are then placed in the optimum positions to achieve the best click through (the Adsense pages will give you ideas on where to position them but it’s worth experimenting to see what works best for you), and the site goes live for people to find and read through.

You can also insert affiliate links for products into these sites in order to gain even more income if you wish, but they are often known as Adsense sites simply because they are set up to attract visitors and click throughs on a specific subject.

Some people end up with dozens of sites like this, and the beauty of them is that once they are built and you have bought your domain name and hosting plan you don’t really need to do too much with them except for promote them. Updating them fairly regularly is good if you want to get to a higher position in the search engine results though, which will gain you more visitors as a result.

You can also keep your site updated more regularly (and encourage repeat visitors) by inserting RSS feeds of news stories related to the subject of your website. Anything that will get people returning to read more – and possibly click on more ads as a result – is worth a try.

One final note here – choose the subjects of your Google Adsense sites wisely. It’s tempting to go for whatever is in the news at the moment, but once the stories die down so will your traffic. You want something that people will always want to know about – saving money, getting a better job, earning more, and various other more personal subjects such as skin care and successful dating for example. There are plenty of options to choose from; you just need to get your thinking cap on to find them.

In short the best place to start making money from Google Adsense is to integrate it into your existing website or blog. As you gain experience and discover the best ways to use it you can start thinking about adding extra sites into the mix. You might end up being an Adsense guru and raking in plenty of money for very little work indeed. That’s the best thing about it – the ‘set and forget’ benefit that keeps on working even when you’re not.

If you enjoyed this article or have any questions or comments about it, please leave them by using the form below. Once you’ve done that it will be time to visit Google’s Adsense site to get started! Good luck.

Mozilla Finds Malware in Firefox Add-Ons

Mozilla’s open source browser is the latest application targeted by malware purveyors. This time, hackers have stashed away a Trojan in a couple add-ons posted on addons.mozilla.org. eSecurity Planet has the goods on which add-ons users need to avoid and what people already affected can do to rid themselves of the malware.

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As it’s grown in popularity, the open source Mozilla Firefox Web browser has fostered a broad ecosystem of add-ons that expand its functionality. As it turns out, though, that same ecosystem can also potentially expose users to risk.

Mozilla today disclosed that a pair of add-ons hosted on its addons.mozilla.org (AMO) site included Trojans. As a result, if a Windows user installed the add-ons, they would be infected by malware that could potentially steal their information.

The two infected add-ons are Version 4.0 of Sothink Web Video Downloader and all versions of Master Filer download manager.

“This vulnerability is known to affect Firefox on Windows only, if either Master Filer or Version 4.0 of Sothink Web Video Downloader are installed,” Mozilla wrote in a blog post confirming the security issue.

Mozilla recommends that potentially impacted Windows users—who may number in the thousands—run an antivirus program since simply uninstalling the affected add-ons does not remove the Trojans.

According to Mozilla, Master Filer has been downloaded 600 times while the Sothink Web Video Downloader has been downloaded 4,000 times. Mozilla removed Master Filer on Jan. 25, 2010 and Sothink Web Video Downloader on Feb. 2, 2010.

Read the full story at eSecurity Planet:
Mozilla Confirms Security Threat From Malicious Firefox Add Ons

Google Updates Apps for Smartphone Use

Google adds smartphone security features to mobile enterprise apps to make them more mobile IT-friendly. Is this a push to take on RIM in the workplace?

February 4, 2010
By Michelle Megna: form internetnews

Google has made an effort to get its suite of productivity applications into the enterprise for some time. One area that was lacking was support for mobile devices, since IT managers like to lock down their staff smartphones as securely as desktops and laptops, if not more so. Today the search giant is releasing updated apps that will appease management’s concerns.

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Google’s suite of productivity applications has been upgraded over the past year to make them more compatible with smartphones, but today the Internet giant unveiled new features that may be critical for mobile IT managers more worried about smartphone security and mobile device management.

Google Apps, which includes Gmail, calendar, and documents apps, was recently updated to sync with the iPhone and Microsoft Windows Mobile handhelds, but largely lacking were features that would mitigate IT concerns.

Today Google is rolling out new administrative control features, for instance, remote wipe and more stringent password protocols, for Google Apps Premier and Google Apps Education users managing iPhone, Nokia E series and Windows Mobile devices, according to a Google mobile blog post by Bryan Mawhinney, mobile software engineer at Google.

The new features will let administrators manage a group of phones from one control panel, at which they can do the following: remotely wipe data from lost or stolen smarthpones; lock idle devices after a period of inactivity; require passwords on each handset; set minimum lengths for more secure passwords; and require passwords to include letters, numbers and punctuation.

Read the full story at Enterprise Mobile Today:
Google Makes Online Collaboration Play with Enterprise Apps

Bing and Yahoo search engine

Google’s Display-Ad Sales Should Top $1 Billion

As analysts say rising demand for Internet display ads will begin paying off for Google in 2010, one asks: “Is this a $10 billion business?” Douglas MacMillan

Douglas MacMillan from Businessweek

Google CEO Eric Schmidt hinted in July that display advertising would probably be the next of his company’s businesses to generate $1 billion in sales. Analysts say 2010 is the year he’ll deliver on that prediction.

Display ads are likely to contribute a little more than $1 billion, or about 4% of Google’s (GOOG) total sales this year—an increase of as much 40% over last year—say analysts, including Doug Anmuth at Barclays Capital. That marks an important threshold for Mountain View (Calif.)-based Google, which makes most of its sales from ads placed alongside search results and which has been criticized for not getting more revenue from other businesses. Demand for display ads, which include marketing messages in videos and banner ads adorning Web pages, may rise faster this year than for search-related ads, according to eMarketer. “You have to go somewhere else to get the next legs of growth,” says Jim Friedland, an analyst at Cowen & Co.

In display advertising, Google lags behind Yahoo! (YHOO), which had revenue of $6.5 billion in 2009 that was generated largely from its display ads. Google has tried to catch up in part through acquisitions. Two of the biggest were aimed at the display ad market: The company paid $1.65 billion for YouTube in 2005 and $3.1 billion for DoubleClick in 2007.

Sales of video and banner ads on YouTube, the world’s most popular video site, are expected by analysts at Barclays to contribute the bulk of Google’s display revenue this year, about $700 million. And with DoubleClick, Google acquired a technology that handles the placement of display ads on sites across the Web. “Display is now a key business for us,” says Susan Wojcicki, Google’s vice-president of product management and one of the company’s earliest employees.

Neal Mohan, the executive in charge of Google’s display business, says Google will draw on its strength in search-related advertising to expand in display. It became the leader in search by using algorithms to help it know which ads to place where. “Our goal is to bring the science of search to the art of display,” Mohan says.

TV and print ads shift to Web display

Mohan says the company is developing tools to help marketers create more effective banner ads and automate their placement. To that end, Google in December bought Teracent, which customizes colors, language, and other elements of a banner ad, depending on who is viewing it. Soon, Google will pair Teracent’s technology with DoubleClick’s ad-placement expertise and its own flagship search ad program, AdWords. Mohan is also trying to expand DoubleClick Ad Exchange—a kind of stock market launched last fall for buying and trading display advertising space on the Web—and offer further options for advertisers on YouTube.

Companies tend to use online display advertising to raise awareness of a brand or product while they deploy search ads to encourage customers to take a specific action—for instance, click on a Web site or make a purchase. Because search ads are often cheaper and their effectiveness easier to measure, budget-conscious advertisers flocked to them during the recession. Now, however, display is getting a boost as big advertisers that have traditionally focused branding efforts on TV and print are shifting more ad dollars to the Web. “There’s a lot of money to be tapped that otherwise would be allocated to TV, that will be moved online,” says technology analyst Greg Sterling. This year, online display advertising may grow 8.2% to $7.9 billion in the U.S., from $7.3 billion in 2009, eMarketer says. Search advertising is expected to rise 5.6% to $11.4 billion.

Google is trying to help advertisers better measure the effectiveness of display ads. “One of the challenges we put to ourselves was: ‘What are the ways a brand advertiser would look to measure [ad impact]?’,” Mohan says. The result: Campaign Insights, a tool developed over a year by dozens of Google engineering teams around the world before it was released in December.

Hair-care company Regis was one of the first to test Campaign Insights. It ran banner ads for Hair Club For Men across hundreds of Google’s partner sites while Campaign Insights tracked the number of people who had seen the ads and then performed related Web searches. “Display [advertising] drives searches and Web site visits,” says Luke Hubbard, vice-president of Beverly Hills (Calif.)-based Integrated Media Solutions, the ad agency that coordinated the campaign for Regis. “We knew that effect was there before, but now we are able to quantify it.” Impressed by the results, Regis increased spending on display ads for the brand in 2010, and Integrated Media Solutions has signed up seven other clients eager to tap the analytics.

Yahoo pitching display-ad strengths

Google offers Campaign Insights free to advertisers that spend above a certain amount on other products. It’s inexpensive and easy for Google to comb through search data, compared to the effort required for Yahoo to offer such a service, says eMarketer analyst David Hallerman. “Google has a lot of potential opportunity in that they can add a lot of these analytics that usually cost companies more,” he says.

Competitors say they’re bracing for a fight. During Yahoo’s Jan. 26 earnings call with analysts, CEO Carol Bartz talked up brand advertisers’ increasing interest in getting their ads placed on professional content sites—a strength for Yahoo. “As these marketers look to position new products and brands in the marketplace, they will need display ads to tell their story,” she said.

To succeed in display, Google has also had to hone its ability to market products through a people-friendly sales force. In search, Google has tended to rely more on the technical effectiveness of its products, analysts say. “Advertising is a lot of hand-holding and schmoozing,” says analyst Sterling. “Historically, Google has not been good on managing the people side.”

That’s changing, says Amy Curtis-McIntyre, senior vice-president of brand communications for hotel chain Hyatt. She says Google has begun regularly sending sales reps to her Chicago offices. “When they develop new search tools or new advertising tools, they bring them to us and present them in a usable way,” says Curtis-McIntyre.

With $1 billion in sight, how big can Google’s display business get? “Google is incredibly well-positioned to be a winner here,” Friedland says. The question he’s now asking: “Is this a $10 billion business?”